When did I become this woman?
I always thought I was along the lines of Hillary.
Last night marked the second weekend in a row that I backed cupcakes from scratch; and the third weekend that I ate cupcakes. Is my world becoming a cupcake?
As I was playing around with different Wilton tips while icing them, I thought I could do this everyday. It was so relaxing and fun to experiment and then, oh boy--can I tell you about my hour long trip to Michael's in the Cake Decorating aisle?!? Holy smokes; they have pre-made fondont in every color for you AND disposable pastry bags.
Did I lose half of you...?
DISPOSABLE PASTRY BAGS MADE MY WEEKEND!
How sad is that?
But they did...not that I never knew they existed just didn't know where to get them or had the energy. Plus, I had no clue what I was missing out on with disposable pastry bags.
I've always had the latex re-usable kind. What a bitch those are; not as big a bitch as ganache and we'll get to her later, but a bitch. It's so hard to clean them properly and if you don't have enough for all the color frostings you are using, you have to re-use one and there is always that small stripe of the other color mixed in. UGH.
Don't get me wrong, same problems could arise with the disposable but I bought a 24 pack, oh lucky day that it was. The coupler is still a pain to get out, once you are finished, but hey can't ask for everything, can you?
So now, the ganache. Ganache is definitely a bitch. Ganache is a type of icing, I did white chocolate and the recipe is very simple. 1 cup of whipping cream, boiled, add to 8 ounces of white chocolate chips. Stir so chips melt. Let cool. Voila. Ganache.
Then the trouble starts: the ganache goes into the pastry bag at the consistency when it's cooled. Which is just like any other frosting.
You start to frost your cakes and here comes trouble: your body heat from your hands (which are holding the pastry bag) warm up and then again melt the ganache. It does not take long for that to happen.
It was like a minute per cupcake to ice. About 5 hours later (I know you did the math, but I took breaks in between) and everything covered in white chocolate ganache; the cupcakes were finished. Huge hit at the office today.
Let's just say that was the first and last time I make ganache. Unless there is a cook out there who knows how to solve this problem.
Recipe from Hillary (from Magnolia).
Inspiration from 52 Cupcakes.
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7 comments:
ganache is the DEVIL. I hardly ever have problems that I can't fix when baking. But last weekend I made a cake that had ganache icing (first timer as well) with my cousin's wife and it was the worst thing (visually) either of us has ever made and we are baking fanatics. I too vow to never use ganache icing again.
I was wondering what you do with all these cupcakes afterwards? Do they call you the cupcake queen at work?
How did the red velvets turn out? The cream cheese icing is super easy to spread--way easier than any other frosting I've tried. I'm not a fan of ganache, so I can't help you there. But, I do know it's used as a filling (or layer) quite often, maybe because it's not too good of a frosting?
Twisted: ha, that is funny--you should have put that in your blog, I could've used a warning, hee hee. Visually after it cools, it looks amazing; sheeny--maybe b/c I used white chocolate.
Bev: Half to the office, some to my friends, and some stay with me. Yeah, my office loves me on Monday mornings.
Hilary: (one L, I'm sorry I misspelled it in the post): recipe was good, my first time with red velvet; making and eating, so it was okay. I used the dye paste so those suckers are blood red! I saw on "All Cupcakes, All the time" some chick used ganache as frosting, so took up on it---I've known it as a filling only, too!
Just an FYI...I was told that the paste coloring can add a bitterness to anything baked, and that you should always use liquid waterbased food coloring when baking. Also, the water based food coloring counts as a liquid ingredient, so using the paste may make them a bit dry.
But the chocolate cupcake recipe from a few weeks ago is DELISH!
golightly:
Whoa! I've never tried ganache, but you may have inspired me to give it a try!
When I first made the red velvet cupcakes, I used red food coloring and I was stunned at the color. They looked a little bit scary! But they tasted great.
Love your blog!
It wasn't the ganache that was ugly (it was quite beautiful) but it was to be the icing on a layer cake that had a mousse filling. The heaving ganache being spread on the top squished all the guts out and we had one UGLY cake.
By the way. I LOVE red velvet and cream cheese icing. I have a good recipe for a layered red velvet and cream cheese frosted cake.
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